I’ve arrived 01 Jul, 2008
I’ve arrived! Things have finally slowed down enough that I can get a weblog post in edgewise. First things first, I’m now moved to the Pacific coast in California, and have a new job as well.
Santa Barbara is literally pretty cool. The temperatures are almost always perfect (in the dead of winter the high is in the 60’s), and moving from a wooded part of Texas it’s a big shock how cool it can get at night, even when the days are hot. I’m renting a room, in a house with a view of the channel islands (on a clear day, over some other houses and power lines).
Another shock was that there is no FIOS available here, so I actually have to plan ahead if I have large data files I need to move around. I got a bit spoiled in Denton since if needed to move a 4GB VMWare image, it could transfer faster than I could drive home to burn it. 3-5Mbit DSL and Cable seem to be the norm here, with miniscule upload speeds by comparison.
The company I’m working for is called Nutricate, and I found out about the job from the Python Job Board so I can tell you that it really does work. I started there in June and it’s been a lot of fun so far. I get to write Python, primarily for an embedded ARM system, but a good part of it is interacting with serial peripherals, having only a partial spec for how the communication is to occur. Our product is to add nutrition information to receipts whenever you order food, which is currently a box (but we’re “not a hardware company”).